I'm going to try something different today and hope to continue it.
the first quoted sentence here works as a tweet, if the 'and''s are replaced with a '+' sign...
Editor's footnote: "San Zuan on Torcello was a special monastery for the convertite, that is, those women who had turned away from a life of prostitution. As such, it appears an appropriate place for this wedding. The 'shame' cast on the patriciate to which Sanudo refers may have led to the debates and legislation, within the following fortnight, concerning the preservation of the nobility's 'purity and status' through marital registration with the state attorneys. cf. Diaries: 41:201, 203".
One of the things I left off doing when the news got worse in 2010,
was exploring the diaries of Marin Sanudo.
Contemporary of King Ferdinand of Spain, Martin Luther, Magellan and already 25 when Henry VIII of England was born,
Sanudo instead was a Venetian. A man of some importance he was in the middle of things
and had the prescience to write some down as time went on. Fifty-eight volumes of it, 1496-1533.
In many ways the height of the European Renaissance and also the age of Christopher Columbus who if you remember was Genoan and beholden to Spain.
Tumultuous times, that showed Venice at her height of power in the region and in the shrinking known world as well.
But times very much like our own I think with curiously just a few central things that are the direct opposite way to how things are now.
Like an executive in finance he also had a seat on the senate, a central council in the government of the state of Venice.
Wikipedia in their last quote in a short entry about him quotes Encyclopedia Brittanica 1911 :
Sanudo played a role in placing the Venetian Jews in the first ever Jewish ghetto, as he stated in a speech in 1515, a year before the ghetto's establishment: "I do not want to omit to relate an evil practice resulting with the continuing contact with these Jews, who reside in great numbers in the cities. Formerly, they were not seen outside their houses from palm Sunday until after Easter. Now till yesterday they were going about and it is a very bad thing, and no one says anything to them, since we need them due to the wars and therefore do what they want."
What he apparently didn't know was that Jews disappear into their homes during Passover. Which just ended for us too, last weekend in conjunction with Easter. but why would that quote be in the 1911 Encyclopedia and why would wikipedia find that interesting?
What the short entry in Wikipedia doesn't talk about is his apparent respect and even admiration for Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman emporer and terror of Europe
throughout most of the century that Sanudo would live and write in.
This link shows an ad for the book I have, published by Johns Hopkins in 2009.
The book is easy to use, arranged topically rather than chronologically and in one volume attempts to give an overview of the kinds of things Sanudo found noteworthy rather than any strict or definitive retelling of the biggest news of the day.
I love it. It's far more interesting than anything I see today. Well, in addition to today. Alongside what I see all the time today.
The guy Teju Coles, interviewed on npr this Monday morning that sends tweets of news from 100 years ago?
It's something I've done before just not in the tweet format.
To prove it I'll give you some from the other day April 8th but that of Sanudo's from 1522 (33: 314). Candia was a Venetian port in Crete. [It will become clear later on why I start with this entry if you just keep reading and the first line fits in a tweet - 144 characters - and is provocative enough, even today]:
"Summary of the report of ser Marco Minio, our former ambassador to the sultan, sent from Candia to our Signoria. The sultan has huge resources,
of manpower, authority, an income of three million gold*, and tax revenues one million two hundred thousand in personal taxes [from Christians]....The mines yield 800,000 ducats per year; salt production gives 400,000; all other commerce yields 400,000. His majesty spends a great deal on the 10,000 janissaries [the Imperial guard].... he has about 10,000 cavalry troops.... He maintains three households. There is his own. There is also the one for 200 children, where they receive instruction in reading and writing and arms-bearing until they are eighteen or twenty years old and then are clothed, given a horse and provisions, and sent on their way. Finally, there is one for the women. He has made many provisions in Pera for instructing the older [Venetian] children. There used to be many Greek Christians living in the Morea [Greece]; at the present time he has taken away their subsidy.
... it is clear he is assiduously obeyed. While I was there, he had a Salitar pasha hanged;...
...He has one hundred large galleys and ninety-two light galleys between Constantinople and Gallipoli [filling the Dardanelles], but they are in poor condition. The arsenal [a ship-manufacturer] he built recently has 114 bays, within which there is continuous construction. It is not closed off [like the one in Venice]; ...
This sultan is a perfect Turk and very observant of his own law; he is the enemy of the Christians and the Jews and mistreats the Jews in his own territories, which did not happen in the days of Selim, his father.
This [Suleiman] is a person who informs himself, who does not like to be told what to do but who instead forms opinions that he clings to stubbornly. I do not believe that he will be a peaceful person, but will soon show that he is most warlike. Now that he has taken Belgrade*, he thinks that he holds the keys to Christendom in his hands. They say that Mustapha Pasha who is beylerbey [governor] in Greece and a friend of ours, wants to make war in Hungary. And in our discussions, this Mustapha told me that our Signoria should not show favor to that king. At the present time, he wants to arm one hundred galleys and send them forth from the strait [the Dardanelles].
The sultan is twenty-three years old and hot-tempered, he has dark hair, pale skin, and deep-set eyes. He wears a turban well down over his eyes, which gives him a secretive air. I believe him to be of medium height, but I have only seen him seated, never standing. In the space of a few days, three of his children have died... has only one child left over one year of age left alive, and two were born a few days before I left. If the sultan were to die, the state would be in the greatest confusion.
The life of the Turkish lord is judged to be very self-indulgent. He makes frequent visits to the women's quarters, creates a lot of disturbances, and often goes sailing. On Fridays, he goes to the mosque to greet people, accompanied by his pashas.
[A discussion of some of these central aides or pashas follows with notes on their appearance and personality one of which, a Slav, seems friendly and could be helpful to Venice etc.]
It is said that as far as the peace accord goes, the pashas were concerned with only two stipulations [with regard to Venice]: that if our ships encounter the sultan's armada when they are at sea, they are to lower their sails, and that if any belonging to a subject of his causes damage [to a Venetian ship] and [the offending ship] is captured, it will be sent to the sultan, who will punish them [the captain and crew]; if they happen to be pirates, justice is to be meted out on the spot. He [ser Minio] said that the sultan sent with him as a gift two tunics of cloth of gold and 5,000 aspers."
* "three million": assumed to be aspers or equivalent, in 1509, 52 aspers to a ducat.
* "Belgrade": captured by Suleiman in August 1521
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